Tag Archives: tat tvam asi

In Part I of this three-part series, I introduced Kant’s work and summarized his views on a priori and a posteriori knowledge. In this second part, we’ll review analytic versus synthetic judgments, clarify the meaning of transcendental idealism as it applies to Kant’s work in general, and also analyze tat tvam asi in terms of Kant’s philosophy.

Analytic and Synthetic Judgments

Kant’s investigation of the faculties of reason led him to explore the nature of judgments. He made clear the crucial difference between analytic and synthetic judgments. Kant’s jargon can become admittedly arcane, but analytic and synthetic are not hard to understand. Continue reading →

Having decided to have śraddha, an openmind on the possibility of the declaration by the vēdās that ānanda is our very svarūpa, our very seeking, and having understood and on that basis decided that mokṣa is the parama puruṣārtha of this life, and further having seen that scriptures are the only pramāṇa, means of knowledge, to mokṣa, let us commence our learning of the mahāvākya, the all important equation, one of which is “tat tvam asi”.

For any mathematical statement to be called an equation, we need to have 2 sides which appear to be unequal. For example 5+5 = 5+5 is not an equation whereas 6+4 = 7+3 is an equation. The mahāvākya “tat tvam asi” is an equation which can be mathematically expressed as tat = tvam. Here tat indicates īśvara, God, and tvam indicates jīva, the individual. In other words the śruti says īśvara = jīva, or God = Individual. Continue reading →